Maximo and Bartola

Originally from near Usulután, El Salvador, the siblings were given by their mother to a merchant who promised he would take them to Grenada to be educated and exhibited.

They were eventually billed as "Aztec Children" and an elaborate story was constructed of how they were found in the temple of a lost Mesoamerican city by the name of Iximaya.

A Grenadian man named Raymondo Selva claimed that he had been given charge of them by their parents under the condition he would provide them with an education in exchange for exhibiting them in Grenada.

[9] Early the next year, they toured Washington, D.C., and visited President Millard Fillmore at the White House.

Another version appeared which claimed they were the children of a mulatto woman from La Puerty located near Usulután, El Salvador.

By November 1860, Maximo and Bartola were being exhibited at Barnum's American Museum alongside Chang and Eng Bunker.

[15] It was reported in late 1867 that the male of the pair of Aztec children had died in Charleston, South Carolina, on November 11, 1867, while on tour alongside Dan Castello's Circus and that he was buried in Magnolia Cemetery.